The present disclosure relates to optical computing devices and, more particularly, to optical computing devices that employ improved optical processing element configurations used to make parallel measurements of sample substances.
Optical computing devices, also commonly referred to as “opticoanalytical devices,” can be used to analyze and monitor a sample substance in real time. Such optical computing devices will often employ a light source that emits electromagnetic radiation that reflects from or is transmitted through the sample and optically interacts with an optical processing element to determine quantitative and/or qualitative values of one or more physical or chemical properties of the substance. The optical processing element may be, for example, an integrated computational element (ICE). An ICE can be an optical thin film interference device, also known as a multivariate optical element (MOE), which can be designed to operate over a continuum of wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum from the UV to mid-infrared (MIR) ranges, or any sub-set of that region. Electromagnetic radiation that optically interacts with the sample substance is changed and processed by the ICE so as to be measured by a detector, such that an output of the detector can be correlated to the physical or chemical property of the substance being analyzed.
In some configurations, multiple ICE cores may be used in an optical computing device to detect a particular characteristic or analyte of interest. The optical responses from each ICE core are sequentially measured by a single detector, and an associated signal processor computationally combines the several responses using coded software such that a linear combination of the responses is obtained and correlated to the analyte of interest. Computationally combining the responses can include determining a weighted average of the various responses in order to obtain the best measurement of the analyte of interest. Since these measurements and computations are performed sequentially, this process takes time.